We estimated the wear volume on the scanning microprobe of an atomic force microscope (AFM) by using images obtained with a high-powered scanning electric microscope (SEM). The wear is due to contact between the pin of the microprobe and the test chip. Before and after the wear test, we took images of the scanning probe using the SEM. We used an image processing and analysis program to measure the wear volume from previous images. We also calculated the specific wear volume on the scanning microprobe from the wear volume, and found that it increases proportionally with the scanning speed.
